Courtesy of Daniel L. Squadron State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, with constituents last fall, said that he favors expanding the East Village’s “bike network so that it’s a viable way for folks to get around to commute and recreate.”

A new year brings a new legislative agenda for State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, who – entering his second term – says that he wants to bring issues that are important to neighborhood residents to the forefront in Albany. In an interview with The Local, Senator Squadron, whose 25th District includes the East Village, the Lower East Side and parts of Brooklyn, discussed the importance of bike lanes, renewing housing laws, cracking down on careless drivers and noisy bars, and expanding East Village parks.

Bike lanes are a hot topic right now. But there are battles still brewing. What will you do this year to help smooth out the sometimes rocky relationship between bikers, businesses, the community and the Department of Transportation?

There’s an overall increase in the bike lanes use, and I think that is great. We are continuing to develop the bike network so that it’s a viable way for folks to get around to commute and recreate.

I like the idea of a bike share program. As we have more bicyclists and more access, which is a great thing, we need to increase compliance with laws. And we need to expand our bike networks for more people out there.

My frustration at bike lanes comes from two places: failure, in some cases, to be fully collaborative with communities and think through the consequences as we expand the network, and secondly, from those few who don’t follow the rules. Too often, the DOT implements lanes without preparing businesses to understand what the rules are. They’ve done it in ways that are not responsive to the community. DOT has gotten better at this; my job is to keep the pressure on. We need clarity about rules for bicyclists and members of the community, and work with community boards, businesses and residents before implementing them. We need opportunities for folks in bicycling communities and other groups to weigh in.
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Liz Wagner Audience members at last night’s meeting of the State Liquor Authority committee of Community Board 3 listen as the panel refused to support a pair of license requests.

A Community Board panel Monday night refused to lend its support to plans to reopen two bars on Avenue A, despite pre-emptive efforts by business owners to smooth things over with East Village residents fed up with noisy nightlife in their neighborhood.

The State Liquor Authority Committee, which helps regulates liquor licenses in the East Village for Community Board 3, declined to lend its support to an application for the new space at 34 Avenue A, formally Aces & Eights, saying the area already has enough bars.

The committee also deflected a request from the owner of the former Superdive space at 200 Avenue A, explaining that the board had initially approved a license at that location for a bookstore or cafe. The State Liquor Authority subsequently permitted a change to let tenants apply for a liquor license, but the committee wants to stick with the board’s original decision.
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Daniel L. Squadron.

State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, re-elected Tuesday to represent the 25th District, which includes the East Village, said that he has plans for an ambitious agenda in his next term that will continue to emphasize neighborhood issues such as reducing noise and increasing pedestrian safety.

Senator Squadron, who spoke to The Local the day after the midterm elections, said he will continue to help craft legislation focusing on those issues and others, including better living standards in public and affordable housing.

Like any other political watcher, Senator Squadron has followed the legislative seachange in Congress with deep interest and he remains hopeful that his fellow Democrats will stay focused on President Obama’s agenda.

He talked with The Local about his plans in Albany, his hopes for the new Congress and his appreciation of East Village-made dumplings.

Going into your new term, what are your priorities right now for the East Village?

I have a lot of the same priorities I had in the previous term. We need a state government that does a better job responding to people’s needs so that the people have more faith in their community. We have to keep fighting for the community. We need effective laws on nightlife and pedestrian safety, which is very important to the East Village.
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In an Election Night appearance on NYU News, Suzanne Rozdeba, who covered the key local political races, discusses how neighborhood issues such as noise complaints, liquor licenses, bike lanes and pedestrian safety played a role in Tuesday’s balloting.

Results of Local Races

Voters cast ballots for candidates in seven local races — three for U.S. representative, two for State Senate and two for State Assembly — and by overwhelming margins returned every incumbent to office.

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Toby Nathan Jerry Levy, one of last night’s few protesters.

Tompkins Square Park was more or less empty Sunday night, save for a few extra auxiliary police vehicles and a rag-tag bunch of seemingly bewildered protesters, all in search of a protest that did not happen, despite lively online previews and last-minute reminders.

“Jerry The Peddler,” the “Slum Goddess,” and one or two other local characters showed up to protest Community Board 3’s new policy designed to implement a “better management of scheduling” and control some “volume issues,” according to Susan Stetzer, the board’s district manager. She told The Local by e-mail that the repercussions of the policy have been “exaggerated greatly,” but Jerry Levy, 56, who’s lived in the East Village for 33 years, said Sunday night that he thinks the issue isn’t the volume, but the changing guard of the community.

“If people who live there” – on Seventh Street between Avenues A and B “have issues with the volume, then they shouldn’t have moved there,” he said. “The community overwhelmingly supports the concerts. This” – the noise proposal – “just comes from a few people who are speaking to a receptive ear of a few reactionary members of the community board.”

He says that the community wants “nice, quiet smiley-faced type of events that are geared toward children,” and that the community board “doesn’t represent the community.”

The community did not, however, turn out in overwhelming numbers to support that point of view. Indeed, John Penley, the longtime East Village activist and photojournalist who organized the protest, was nowhere to be found when the time came to demonstrate. Mr. Penley had not returned earlier calls from The Local about the event.

Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

On Monday, The Local’s Kim Davis wrote about NYU’s expansion plan. This morning, the Washington Square News describes the debate a bit west of our neighborhood where many residents questioned the plan at a Community Board 2 meeting Monday night.

Another one of our Monday posts offered a patron’s perspective on the closing of the Sin Sin lounge. EV Grieve reports on another sign that the end is near for Sin Sin: the club’s website is down. (Grieve also has a humorous item demonstrating that concerns about noisy students are hardly a new development.) And Bowery Boogie has a post about the neighborhood’s star turn in a new Samsung commercial.

Timothy J. Stenovec The Sin Sin Lounge, where a clubgoer was fatally shot in August, will shutter its nightclub operations later this month and re-open as new type of venue.

The Sin Sin lounge is undergoing a major makeover.

The Local has confirmed reports that the lounge, the scene of a fatal shooting of a clubgoer in August, will close its doors at the end of the month to undergo renovations and re-open as a new type of venue with a different theme.

Sin Sin had become a focal point for neighborhood complaints about violence and noise at bars after the shooting death of Devin Thompson, who was 43, outside the club on Aug. 22. No arrests have been made in connection with Mr. Thompson’s death although the police want to question two men who were at the club the night that he was killed.

A post Tuesday on EV Grieve was one of the earliest indications that changes might be coming to the bar. Posts on other blogs offered similar reports.
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Kim Davis.

What legitimate expectations does the community have of bar and club-owners when it comes to noise? And just which community are we talking about? I wanted to remove my editorial hat for a moment and join this conversation from a personal perspective.

Of course we can have legitimate expectations when it comes to how the nightlife industry conducts itself. The owners should be held responsible for behavior inside bars and clubs, for the level of noise emanating from the premises, and for what happens right on their doorstep. In particular, they should be held accountable if they serve liquor to guests who are already intoxicated: illegal, of course, but a law hardly ever enforced.

They cannot, however, be held responsible for policing the streets of the East Village. It was the city, remember, who decided that smokers should congregate outside licensed premises, with the result that late-night conversations once held behind closed doors are now held on the sidewalk.

Beyond posting friendly reminders to keep the noise down, what can bar and club owners do? They have no authority to impose silence on the streets; they can’t control the behavior of customers who have left their premises; and they certainly can’t stop cabs sounding their horns.

But just who is being disturbed by late-night street life? I’ve lived between Avenues C and D for ten years, and my neighbors aren’t complaining about noise from clubs. They can’t hear it over the music they’re blasting themselves. What’s more, long-term residents of the blocks east of Avenue A are for the most part happy to see bright lights and nightlife replace the dark storefronts of the past. As the urbanist Jane Jacobs taught, empty, silent streets are hospitable to criminality.

Is it noise that’s really what bothers some segments of the community? Or is it change? Is it the sense that the people making the noise (visitors to the neighborhood, students) don’t really belong? Is this supposed issue really a peg on which to hang prejudices and a sort of inverted snobbery: keep out of my East Village – you’re not welcome?

Kim Davis is the community editor of The Local East Village.

Dan Nguyen

Good morning, East Village.

On Tuesday night, Community Board 3 voted overwhelmingly to pass a measure that would restrict the number of concerts using amplified sound at Tompkins Square to one day per weekend.

Although the proposal passed without debate, Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Community Board 3, told NYU Journalism’s Timothy J. Stenovec that she was surprised by the level of vitriol about the measure in the blogosphere.

Ms. Stetzer took particular exception to the characterization by one commenter on EVGrieve who described her as “a self-appointed sound-nazi.”

“You don’t call people Nazis,” Ms. Stetzer told Mr. Stenovec after the meeting.

Ms. Stetzer also denied that there was any political motivation behind the measure.

“No one’s against concerts, no one’s against any type of concerts, no one’s against political activity,” Ms. Stetzer told Mr. Stenovec. “All that’s asked is that certain concerts that are very loud, and we’re not saying which ones, just take it down a notch.”

In other neighborhood news, there are a lot of reads about the 67-year-old East Village man who was injured when an air conditioner fell from the sixth floor of a walk-up on Second Avenue. Check out The Post’s account here, EVGrieve’s here and the Daily News here.

There’s another fine read about an effort to feed the homeless in The Times. We’ll have a story later today by NYU Journalism’s Meredith Hoffman about another plan to help the homeless.

And here’s an interesting link from Guestofguest about one bar’s unusual attempt to connect with its neighbors.

Dan Nguyen

Earlier this week, we wrote about a meeting of the state liquor authority committee of Community Board 3, where neighborhood residents successfully opposed the granting of a liquor license to a diner on Avenue A. One reader, Josef, commented in the forums:

Who are these people? Obviously they do not deserve to live in such a cool neighborhood. There are thousands and thousands of people who would love to move to the East Village and revel in its bars, restaurants, noise, traffic, and graffiti. Instead, the best hood for partying in the city winds up populated by shrinking violets with sensitive eardrums and early bedtimes.

Later in the week, we posted a story about the Ninth Precinct Community Council Meeting where at least 25 people showed up to voice their complaints about noise and fighting outside East Village bars.

As the weekend approaches – with Oktoberfest celebrations and other events planned – we’d like to know what you think.

Are complaints about noisy bars and congested streets overblown?

Or do residents have a legitimate expectation that business owners control the riff-raff?

Let us know.

State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, with constituents this summer, co-sponsored a recently enacted law that can help close troublesome nightspots.

There’s a new weapon to close down noisy and violent bars. At Tuesday’s Community Council meeting, Daniel L. Squadron, a Democratic state senator for the 25th District, which includes the East Village, discussed a new law signed by Gov. David A. Paterson just last month, designed to fight the very problems making life miserable for many locals. But for it to work, neighbors have to voice their complaints.

In an interview Wednesday, Senator Squadron told The Local East Village that with the Squadron/Schimminger Bill, signed into law on Aug. 15, the State Liquor Authority can revoke a liquor license from an establishment when police have referred six or more noise or disorder incidents to the authority within 60 days. Before the new law was enacted, liquor licenses could be revoked for repeated noise violations, but a police complaint was not considered evidence of a disturbance unless the liquor authority could show that the license holder was responsible.
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Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney, here greeting constituents at the India Day Parade last month, said that job creation is crucial for eliminating income inequality in the East Village.

Only days after Representative Carolyn B. Maloney won the Democratic party’s nomination for the 14th Congressional District, she was on her way to Washington to continue her long fight to pass the 9/11 Health and Compensation bill, of which she has been a leading advocate.

Ms. Maloney, 64, who defeated her opponent, Reshma Saujani, in the primary elections on Sept. 14 with 81 percent of the vote, spoke with The Local East Village about her stance on poverty, homelessness, noise violations – and bed bugs! – in our neighborhood.
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Stephanie Butnick Angry neighbors of Table 12 hold up signs in protest of the East Village diner’s application for a liquor license. The application was denied.

Amid protests from angry neighbors, a Community Board panel refused Monday night to recommend that a new liquor license be granted to an East Village diner.

The diner, Table 12, a 24-hour eatery at 188 Avenue A, had applied to the State Liquor Authority committee for a new wine and beer license. The committee regulates liquor licenses in the East Village for Community Board 3.

But those who live near the bar – including about a half dozen residents who held up red signs reading “No More” – asked the committee to reject the request citing concerns about, noise, vandalism and alcohol-related violence.
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